International higher education is the third largest export industry in Australia. Student attrition is an area of concern in higher education institutions. Most research undertaken so far has focused on domestic student attrition in Australia and globally. This study focuses on an Australian university to examine the causes of international…

This study reports on two key aspects relating to the use of the Online Learning Readiness Self-Check (OLRSC) survey, which has been proposed as identifying non-traditional students' readiness for online learning, and their strengths and weaknesses in six key areas. The first aspect validates the use of the instrument based on data from 199…

In this article, we present a case study of the nature of First Peoples' engagement with the GUMURRII Student Success Unit at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. Higher education plays a critical role in improving socioeconomic outcomes in First Peoples communities. Recent reports indicate First Peoples are still under-represented at…

Although high PhD attrition rates are a matter of international concern, the factors that lead doctoral researchers to leave their programmes are not well understood. The present study addresses that issue by exploring factors that prompted thoughts of discontinuing among 1017 PhD researchers (PhDRs) at a public, research-intensive Australian…

Academic failure is an important and personal event in the lives of university students, and the ways they make sense of experiences of failure matters for their persistence and future success. Academic failure contributes to attrition, yet the extent of this contribution and precipitating factors of failure are not well understood. To illuminate…

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples remain significantly under-represented in higher education systems. There are significant disparities in university completion rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts. The poor-retention and high-attrition rates among Aboriginal and…

Student attrition is an area of constant concern for higher education managers and policymakers alike, yet little is known of the outcomes of those who depart higher education prematurely. We examine the educational and financial outcomes of students who start, but do not complete, a Bachelor-level course using data from the Australian Bureau of…

Australian higher education institutions have focused on attrition rates with increased vigour in light of the introduction of a new student success metric tied to attrition rates. Online programs have been of particular concern given persistently high attrition rates, being roughly double that of programs delivered either face-to-face or in…

While no major change in relation to student attrition and retention data has been recorded over the past 20 years, the increasingly neoliberal agenda imposed on Australian higher education institutions has led to increased scrutiny around such data. In this case study, we explore discourses of attrition and retention to understand better the…

Student retention in education courses is a political imperative. This research examined the wicked problem of attrition in a Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Studies) course, drawing on the experiences of three different groups of students studying early childhood. The participants from each study represented different student groups within…

This publication presents completion and attrition rates for apprentices and trainees using three different methodologies: (1) contract completion and attrition rates: based on the outcomes of contracts of training; (2) individual completion rates: based on contract completion rates and adjusted for factors representing average recommencements by…

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted education provision worldwide. In Australia, the government took a proactive stance to reduce the impact of the pandemic, temporarily banning higher education students from attending university campuses. With a lockdown in place, educational institutions required a rapid shift in approaches to teaching and learning…

As higher education has made the transition from elite to mass enrolments, the student body has become more diverse and online and blended learning have become more common. This study aimed to examine the impacts on attrition of admitting a more diverse student body with the shift towards online and blended learning. A hypothesised path model of…

In the context of the equity/widening participation policy landscape in Australia, scholarly exploration of alternative pathways into higher education is becoming increasingly important to inform innovative pedagogies, answer complex questions, and improve outcomes and experiences for students. This article focuses on one alternative pathway,…

There is widespread public concern at the high drop-out rates among apprentices in Australia. This paper argues that this concern may be misplaced as it fails to allow for eventual completion over time. We argue that a methodology that concentrates on a single training episode only is less appropriate to evaluating training outcomes in a regime…